CLEARWATER, Fla. — The race to the be the guy the Phillies have waiting in the wings if (when?) the need arises for a sixth starting pitcher has been a battle of attrition early in camp.

Tyler Cloyd, who went 15-1 between Reading and Lehigh Valley last season and made six starts with the Phils late in the year, has had two rough outings.

Jonathan Pettibone, who reached Triple-A last season and is considered the organization’s top right-handed pitching prospect, got knocked around in the intrasquad game and gave up two homers in his lone Grapefruit League appearance.

Sunday, veteran Aaron Cook made his first start of the spring after pitching two scoreless innings in relief against the Yankees Feb. 26. The right-hander didn’t exactly kick the door open, but his fielders certainly did a nice job of kicking the ball around.

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“Yeah, it was weird,” Cook said after allowing seven hits and four runs (three earned) in four innings as the Phillies’ split-squad team beat Toronto, 13-5, at Bright House Field. “I felt like I was making some pretty good pitches. I made a couple bad ones that they hit pretty hard, but for the most part I accomplished what I wanted to do today: hit my spots, work on a couple pitches.”

Cook has had something of a weird career. He had a pretty successful run as one of the toughest pitchers in baseball against whom to homer, and did it while pitching for nearly a decade with the Rockies in Coors Field — a pair of five-letter words that usually equate to a four-letter word or three from pitchers.

Cook has a 4.60 ERA for his career, and a strikingly similar mark (4.65 ERA) at Coors. In 2008 he was an All-Star, going 16-9 with a 3.96 ERA and allowed just 13 homers in 211 1/3 innings — an amazing ratio under any circumstances, and ridiculous for a guy spending half his time in the thin air of Denver.

“I think the pitchers who succeed there are the guys who are mentally tough,” Cook said. “They can take a beating and just go out there. … You see a lot of guys who say, ‘my stuff doesn’t do this’ or ‘my stuff doesn’t do that’ and they start worrying about that rather than, ‘this is what I’ve got and this is what it’s doing, I have to figure out a way to win.’ That was always my mentality.”

Cook is trying to figure out a way to survive following a rocky year with the Red Sox in 2012, a season that came after two years of dealing with shoulder and knee problems. After a rough Boston debut in early May, he joined its rotation in late June and went 2-2 with a 2.16 ERA in his first five starts. That feel-good story went sour as the Red Sox collapsed, with Cook going 2-8 with a 6.98 ERA in his final 12 starts. Although Cook never has been a strikeout pitcher — he’s never had 100-plus K’s in a season that reputation as a contact pitcher reached ridiculous levels last season. In 94 innings with the Sox he had 20 strikeouts and 21 walks allowed. It wasn’t until his 11th start of the year that he registered more than two strikeouts in a start. In his first 10 outings spanning 57 innings, he struck out just seven hitters.

“I pitch to contact and work quickly,” Cook said. “If I need to go for a strikeout, I sometimes can go for it, but I’m not going to be a high-strikeout guy. I want to work quickly, throw a (small) amount of pitches and get our defense off their feet and let them come in and use their bats.”

Cook is a non-roster invitee with the Phils, and Jon Lannan has the inside lane for the No. 5 starter’s job. Cook is one of a handful of guys trying to be next option — even if that means providing long relief for the Phils at first. The early leader in that race is veteran Rodrigo Lopez, who made a pair of strong outings for the team before joining Team Mexico for the World Baseball Classic over the weekend.

“It’s been a while since I’ve pitched out of the bullpen, but I have done it with the Rockies,” he said. “Last year I told Boston I could do it – they didn’t use me there, but I told them I could do it.

“I’d love to be a starter, but if the opportunity comes to do something else, I’ll take the ball whenever they give it to me.”